Born to Run And Run And Run

It’s Boss Time! again and for once it’s not Dublin but the rest of the country that’s going to be enjoying all that Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band-y goodness.

He’s been in Cork and Belfast before but Limerick and Kilkenny are both virgin territory for Bruce whose love affair with this island grows more torrid by the year. No offence to the other three fine metropolises, but Kilkenny looks like being extra special with Springsteen joined for both Nowlan Park sell-outs by a slew of Irish acts and Josh Ritter who at this stage qualifies for honorary citizenship.
It’s an awfully big deal for Delorentos singer and guitarist Ronan Yourell who fell in love with Bruce the moment he heard ‘Growin’ Up’ from 1973’s Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. album.
“I’m a huge, huge fan,” he tells Hot Press. “Bruce is my biggest influence in terms of songwriting and certainly performance. He’s the benchmark for all of us in this game. I like that he’s so engaged with the world and draws you into the story with the imagery he creates. I’m a sucker for his more slow burning songs like ‘Philadelphia’ and ‘Secret Garden’, which are almost like short films. He’s also got a romantic side, which is really noticeable on ‘Queen Of The Supermarket’. It’s got an innocence and naivety that’s remarkable for someone in their sixties who you’d expect to be a bit cynical at this stage.”
When did Ronan pop his Bruce live cherry?
“In the RDS about 10 years ago,” he fondly recalls. “I’ve seen him four or five times since. My overriding memory of that first gig was having a sore Achilles tendon afterwards. I was standing for 3 ½ hours while this guy threw himself
around the stage. God knows how his Achilles tendon felt!”
Have Delorentos ever done a sneaky soundcheck cover of a Springsteen tune?
“Yeah, we’ve had a go at ‘Born To Run’, which is even more fun to play than it is to listen to.
Don’t be surprised one day if there’s a Delos Sing Bruce album!”
Damien Dempsey is hoping to go one step better and actually share a mic with the
great man.
“Glen (Hansard) might be asking Bruce, ‘Can we do ‘The Auld Triangle’ with you at the end,’” he laughs. “One verse with Bruce? That’d be a good time to kick the bucket. Imagine: ‘He died on stage with The Boss!’
“The first time I properly heard him, I was working in this bar in Manhattan called Rocky Sullivan’s. The half-Irish, half-Lithuanian guy pulling pints with me, George Korniyenko, said, ‘Wait until you hear this’ and turned on ‘Racing In The Street’ off Darkness On The Edge Of Town. I was hooked then. This was around ’97 and Bruce has been a massive inspiration since.”
Scratch beneath the surface, Damo reckons, and the Asbury Park condition isn’t a whole lot different to the Donaghmede one.
“Bruce gives you pride in your working-class roots,” proffers the resident of the latter. “He’s written songs about the horrible parts of that and the great parts so it’s influenced me. And then you see him reaching back into folk history with The Seeger Sessions. I did that with The Rocky Road. He gives people hope in his songs and I try to do the same. He opens their minds and takes them on a journey. Great imagery, a strong storyline – they’re modern day ballads.”
As for those legendarily long shows, Dempsey adds: “A lot of wordsmiths tend to be a bit introverted and have an artistic temperament that makes them feel awkward performing. Never give the crowd what they want, do their own thing. When Bruce steps on stage though it’s always with the intention of blowing the audience away. His energy and fitness and the love that emanates from him… nobody comes close to matching what Springsteen does.”
Also thrilled to be on the Nowlan Park bill is Donal Lunny who performs on the Sunday with fellow trad legends Liam O’Flynn, Andy Irvine and Paddy Glackin.
“He’s one of the last great protest singers, which strikes a chord with me having been in Moving Hearts and doing a bunch of songs about The Troubles in the North, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and so on,” Donal reflects. “Taking a stance like that went out of fashion in the late to mid-‘80s, but Bruce has very much stuck to his guns and is talking about the so-called War on Terror, the power of corporations, Wall Street and all the other stuff that needs to have a light shone on it. There’s a vibe about Bruce and The E Street Band that again reminds me of Moving Hearts – this big family of musicians and crew, who know each other intimately, travelling round together and trying to make a difference. To be as massive a star as he is and retain that purity of spirit is quite an achievement.”
If anyone’s as big a Woody Guthrie nut as Springsteen, it’s Lunny’s bouzouki-wielding pal Andy Irvine.
“Yeah, Andy’s intends to do an album of Woody songs in a similar vein to the Folkways tribute to Woody and Leadbelly that Bruce and U2 were part of a while back,” he reveals. “He also on The Seeger Sessions did ‘Mrs. McGrath’, which originated during the Napoleonic campaigns and was introduced to America by the Irish who went there to escape The Famine and ended up fighting in The Civil War. There are lots of Civil War references and Irish folk influences on Wrecking Ball too. We’re all drinking from the
same well!”
It’s testament to Bruce’s songwriting skills that his music resonates as loudly on this side of the Atlantic as it does in the States where Springsteen-worship is almost enshrined in The Constitution.
“I’m just really thankful for people like him and Tom Petty who showed me there was this whole other word of music beyond the glam rock I was then into,” Brandon Flowers tells Hot Press. “One of the first things that hooked me was his honesty. The guy’s not afraid to lay his soul bare. I saw him in New Jersey in the New Medowlands Stadium and ‘Lost In The Flood’ and ‘Wrecking Ball’ were the two best songs of the night. He’s 40-plus years into his career and still improving as a writer. I guess they’re about the recession, but there are symbols in those songs that you can interpret a multitude of ways. His music is just so unreal.”
Rivalling Brandon in the Bruce fanboy stakes is The Handsome Family’s Brett Sparks who asked the inevitable ‘fave Springsteen album’ question immediately bursts into song.
“‘The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways/Like a vision she dances across the porch, as the radio plays/Roy Orbison singing for the lonely…’ I grew up in Odessa, Texas – George Bush country – and had never heard anything like ‘Thunder Road’ until my girlfriend in high-school gave me Born To Run because she didn’t like it,” the impressively whiskered singer croons then says. “With its themes of being stuck in a backwater shithole it resonated very strongly. ‘It’s a town full of losers, we’re pulling out of here to win.’ The first lines are so cinematic that you get sucked into Springsteen’s world from the get go. Then there’s ‘Jungleland’, which is operatic and balletic. Bruce uses those very words – ‘There’s an opera out in the turnpike, a ballet being fought out in the alley.’ It’s so overblown and ambitious that it’s almost absurd but, goddamnit, it works. At the end of Born To Run you feel like you’ve been somewhere. This record magically came into my life at just the right time. The best ones always do.”
Noah and The Whale’s Charlie Fink admits that large chunks of their breakthrough Last Night On Earth album were written under the influence
of Bruce.
“Our guitarist Fred lent me Nebraska, Darkness On The Edge Of Town and the making of Darkness… documentary,” he confided while over in Dublin recently for a stag’s. “Springsteen writes some of the best lyrics, he’s amazing. For me ‘Badlands’ is probably his masterpiece. He looks incredible for his age too!”
Blondie drummer Clem Burke is clear about Bruce’s place in the grand musical scheme
of things.
“He’s the greatest rock star that ever lived,” Springsteen’s fellow New Jerseyan insisted backstage last week at the Olympia. “He’s better than Elvis, he’s better than The Beatles and better than The Rolling Stones. He’s outlasted it all; he’s a force of nature. You can see his enthusiasm. He just makes people happy. He takes from a lot of different sources – roots rock ‘n’ roll, ‘60s bubblegum music and the Woodie Guthrie side of things – and assimilates it into what’s become Bruce Springsteen.
“What really makes him special though is his live shows,” Clem continues. “He just gives out so much energy live; it’s inspiring. I saw Bruce at Wembley the second time he came to the UK. I was sitting with Elvis Costello and Andy Mackay from Roxy Music and their jaws were on the floor because they hadn’t known what to expect and it was so good. The other night they played the whole Born To Run album and dedicated it to James Gandolfini who was a big fan of his. It was the perfect gesture from a perfect musician.”